Traces
by cinnamon countess
Summary: AJ. "No, listen to me. We've had this conversation before. We can't be together if I'm getting an arranged marriage." All Alicia's rules are about to broken. And maybe she likes it.


**A/N: **This is my first fanfiction, so here goes nothing.

Please review, because I really want some feedback about how I can improve my writing. I'm not sure how many reviews is typical for each chapter, and I haven't really read any stories in the clique fandom so far, so I'm just going to go with the general that I've seen in other fandoms; the fact that I'll update after **ten **reviews. Then again, I'm not really sure if that's too much. Probably is.

First time, though.

Various pairings, but it's mostly going to be mostly Alicia & Josh with Massie & Derrick on the side.

**10 **reviews for an update?

Mwah!

-Mia (technically, my name's Emilia, but I like the name Mia better. Plus, it's been my nickname since I was around two).

* * *

**prologue**

Born into a world of fashion and glamour, where everything moves too fast to comprehend, some people stay in the background, like late bloomers, waiting for their right "time" to come.

Others leap out before realizing that the biggest experience that they have in the real world is learning how to climb up a slide (backwards). The year is 2013, when two of the country's most prestigious universities, Harvard and Yale have a new acceptance of the generation of students from OCD and Briarwood.

You know you love them, or are at least jealous of them. Who wouldn't be?

The days of the Current State of the Union and the tyrannous Massie Block's reign are over, but it appears that the Wicked Witch of Westchester is back for one final round of the game with secrets and gossip from pre-OCD to summer romances to, some secrets that will the world they live in apart.

Or not.

* * *

**one.**

The story started way before the day that they were born, the day that their parents decided to marry each other as if they had the choice of not having an arranged marriage -it started way back yonder before anybody could remember-. Way back yonder, too far to remember: that's how the good stories start. Those kind of stories that are everlasting, because in truth, people have always loved fairy-tales (and believed in them too) are magical and most of all imaginary, because nothing lasts forever.

This should have been a forever story.

Kristen never knows what to do with herself when she vacates one home, and moves to the next -to her, what's the definition of home? Just another place to live in?-. Knowing that each stay will only be temporary, her schedule fluctuating based upon her performance with the Soccer Sisters, Kristen's led a fearful life -but not anymore, she swears to herself-. From now on, after being accepted into the school of her dreams, Harvard, on a soccer scholarship, everything will be different, but most importantly: it will be perfect.

There will be no distractions, anymore. She collapses upon the mattress of her dorm room, ignoring the squeals from those types of forever-cliques who apparently meet right outside of her door, who say things like, "I haven't seen you in forever!", when their separation has only been for a few months. Kristen grimaces. She hasn't thought about the Pretty Committee, having lost contact with all of them sans her current boyfriend, Dempsey Solomon, -but really, even if Kristen had the chance, she wouldn't take back the past four years.

She's reading when somebody knocks on the door, legs sprawled out across the mattress, and her nose tucked into the pages of a second-hand book, still smelling like vintage perfume, a gift from one of her friends. It's an unfamiliar hobby for the girl who's usually either on her feet, and a startling sight for her roommate, who could, after all these years, still recognize one of her old best friends from anywhere.

"Kristen!" the other blond member of the Pretty Committee attacks Kristen in a hug, while Kristen stays silent. Claire suddenly pulls back from the hug, only realizing now that there's been some change in the previously exuberant girl's nature. "What's wrong?" Her eyebrows crease with frustration.

Kristen takes a deep pause. "You had an affair with my boyfriend of three years, and now we're finally back together, and then you have to come back to Harvard and mess everything up. Do you know how much he loved you? Do you know how much I had to do to earn back that love?"

Kristen speaks quickly, as if her speech is being timed.

"I'm sorry," Claire begins, though she knows what she's always known. Sorry isn't enough.

::

Now that she thinks about it, being late to class on her very first day at an Ivy League was probably not a good idea.

In fact, it wasn't even close to the opposite of the good -it was very, very _bad-. _They lived in a world where first impressions mattered the most, in which a person was judged completely within three seconds after they were introduced; she forget about the part that said, the more that you get to know them, the easier it is to accept the individualities, because that's what makes them them.

If it makes it any better, wild child Massie Block wasn't doing anything bad -not even remotely _bad-. _In fact, she had bumped into a girl in the bathroom who was suffering from severe I-can't-use-mascara-properly-itis.

"Uh-huh," said the professor, upon the girl walking calmly into the English classroom. It was more like a lecture hall, with cavernous, spacious room, and over three hundred chairs packed tightly together. "Class," he began. The man had a low, gnarly voice, and Massie inwardly cringed, wishing there was some sort of voice moisturizer. "Being accepted into Harvard's direct med program is no small feat."

_Wait, what?! _Massie hadn't applied for medical school -she had applied for a fashion program...at Columbia...which wasn't anywhere close to Cambridge, a not-so-quaint city that Massie associated with stuffy bankers and nerdy lawyers.

What had she gotten herself into?

Massie didn't pay attention for the rest of the boring English period, or the one after that even with the cute boy sitting next to her, or even when a previous A-lister from Octavian had frantically tried to gain her partner's attention, deciding upon instead focusing her short attention span on the geometric proof that could quite simply be solved in three problems. The beautiful brunette didn't pay attention to her professor when he sternly scolded her upon not remembering the sixty-seventh element of the periodic table or even the simple formula for an interest problems, or where the talus bone was -when the Asian kids in her class exchanged disapproving glances-, now that was when Massie looked up from her compact and decided do deal with the mess that was now her life.

What's a girl got to do?

::

Alicia Riviera had never even spoken to boy -at least not for more than thirty seconds which involved a conversation that was only prompted by the teacher goading her into a science lab group that consisted of people besides her own-self-. Now, at this sort-of exclusive academy, that was strangely enough co-ed, by the name of Yale, Alicia was forced to colloborate with those of the opposite gender. On a regular basis. What sort of torture was this? Alicia considered writing to her father -a very angry letter about associating with "bad" people, and voila.

Just like that, the boys could be removed out of Yale, or perhaps Alicia could be accepted into some other Ivy League (after all, she was the valedictorian, participated in an experiment that resulted in a Nobel Prize for herself, the award's youngest recipient, graduated high school at the age of eleven and was now twelve, etc.). The list of facts on why Alicia Riviera was a successful young child could go on forever, but that wasn't about to make her friends; at Octavian, Alicia had managed to get herself into the top clique there, by the name of the Pretty Committee, but it was an all-girls school.

Everything was different here. Alicia had suddenly, somehow became shy and self-conscious over the summer when there was some problem with her family that her mother had suddenly died from a heart attack, and her father had re-married himself to a successful Indian woman, who insisted on having the family name still be Patel (some sort of religion/pride issue), and just like that, Alicia was somehow an Indian girl.

From the time that Massie Block, her ex-best friend had doubted Alicia's original Spanish nature in the fifth grade, Alicia had never really thought more about her race, and how that would affect how she would be treated. After all, she was the school's snobby rich girl, gossip girl, and exotic beauty queen all wrapped up into one that could easily be reversed into some sort of innocent, carefree package that was presented to teachers, and now, to professors. But somehow, over high school, Alicia's priorities had caught up to her head, and she had suddenly realized that her father really never would let her be a journalist.

No.

She would have to be some sort of lawyer, because it was either that, or a doctor, or some sort of successful businessman in which a person had to be cunning, and Alicia was neither a "man" or "cunning" (at least that's what she had told her father when she had accepted the direct program for Yale. Previously, Alicia had not been accepted into the school, but after some not-so-subtle convincing on her father's part, and some "secret" money exchanges, Alicia had been accepted into the school of her so-called dreams.

Alicia sighed. Going to Yale was supposed to be some sort of dream come true, but right now, she feels as though her whole life has been planned out for her. She makes that point to one of her rich friends on the way to class on the first morning of school. "Don't you ever think that our whole lives have been planned out for us?"

The girl doesn't respond. "Wait...oh? I don't have any more lines. Guess I can finally leave."

Of course, Alicia thought to herself. That brunette was only another of those "friends" that her daddy had hired for her so that she wouldn't feel lonely so far away from home. Thankfully, the girl wasn't going to Yale. In fact, none of her hired friends were, so perhaps, just maybe, Alicia could start a new life here.

It could only be better than where she came from.

Until the beginning of class starts, and look who's there, assigned as her partner: that boy that she had had a crush on since forever from Briarwood. What was his name? Oh, yeah. Josh Gehlaut, the only person that ever beat her in her grades: Alicia's top competition.

Too bad she had fallen in love with him.

* * *

So, yeah, that was really bad.

But, please review?

**Recap: **Kristen and Claire are at Yale, but Kristen still hasn't forgotten Claire for having an affair with Dempsey while Dempsey was supposed to be with Kristen. Wild child Massie has been shipped off to Harvard's medical school program, instead of a fashion school in Columbia, and decides to start up some drama to keep herself occupied. Our favorite little gossip girl has had her last name changed after her father got re-married, and is trying to fit the stereotype of a typical traditional Indian girl in order to make the only crush in her life fall in love with her. (A/N: I made Josh Indian to fit along with the "traditional" concept better).

-coffee countess-


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